summer day

 It rained, heavily, a while ago. I think it's going to be drier after this - the air, I mean. This week we've had a reprieve from the high heat, but it was more humid that before, so the air conditioning was still in use. What would we do without the weather to complain about? But I won't have to water the plants outside.

The Yearling is so enjoyable and I'm surprised at it. Well, these people had a hard life, so "enjoyable" is not the best word, but the writing just brings you along smoothly and willingly. I've noticed it basically consists of lots of short, almost abrupt sentences, which doesn't sound good, does it? But it doesn't seem to matter, it's just her style and it works well. 

"Jody went around the side of the house and took down the milk-gourd from the wall. He felt as light as the gourd. It seemed to him in his liberation that he might spread his arms and float over the gate like a feather. The dawn was still nebulous. A mocking-bird made a thin metallic sound in the chinaberry. The Dominick rooster crowed uncertainly. This was the hour at which Penny arose, allowing Jody to sleep a little later. The morning was still, with a faint fluttering of breeze through the tops of the tall pine trees. The sunrise reached long fingers into the clearing. As he clicked the lotgate, doves flew from the pines with a whistling of wings."

                                               -  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I'm thinking of making a plain summer top, something simple that takes a yard or slightly more of fabric, like the One Yard Minimalist Top on Etsy; I have to look around to see if I've got something here. 

This morning I looked down and Daisy was playing with her reddish ball in the kitchen. Honestly, it did try to get through my subconscious that there isn't a red ball, but not quite - anyway, I picked it up to toss into the living room, but - it was a little tomato! That one in the photo above. Yeah, trying to get things off the counter, but it doesn't always work out. Which reminds me: the last time I cleaned the counter, I put some stuff on the table - she was sleeping somewhere. After a while, I turned and she was sitting on the wooden cutting board! I almost tossed it immediately, but I actually Never use it for cutting, we have something else. So, I sprayed with vinegar, etc., and scrubbed. It's mainly useful for resting a large, hot pan on it. So, it's still with us, but if I ever think it may be used for cutting by anyone, it will go into the trash. 

Yeah, she's cute. She was looking into my eyes earlier, and so earnestly, that you can't be angry for long. She tries to belong, she tries to understand, she tries to be good, I'm sure. But for some reason she can't figure it out. Annie does not look deeply into the eyes, she is a simpler being. But she's also a lovely cat. They're good companions for each other and for us.

I am very slowly going through The Distant Mirror, about the 14th century in Europe. I picked it up today, and was surprised:

"Long before Columbus, they knew the world was a globe, a knowledge proceeding from familiarity with the movement of the stars, which could be made comprehensible only in terms of a spherical earth. It was said by the cleric Gautier de Metz in his Image du Monde, the most widely read encyclopedia of the time, that a man could go around the world as a fly makes the tour of an apple... Visually, people pictured the universe held in God's arms with man at its center. It was understood that the moon was the nearest planet, with no light of its own, that an eclipse was the passage of the moon between the earth and the sun; that rain was moisture drawn by the sun from the earth which condensed into clouds and fell back as rain; that the shorter the time between thunder and lightning, the nearer the source."

                                                     -   Barbara Tuchman